


like the deserts miss the rain

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Dehydration, Escape, F/M, Imprisonment, Inspired By Tumblr, Prison, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Rogue One - some of them live, Tumblr Prompt, background spiritassassin, prison break - Freeform, thirst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 05:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10780128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian's no stranger to being thrown in prison and the deprivations and pain thereof.He knows how to pass the time.He just wishes he could have something to drink.





	like the deserts miss the rain

Reluctantly Cassian swims back up through the waters of his murky sleep and his blood-soaked dreams and memories, and before he can even open his eyes he very nearly wants to dive back into that murky oubliette of his oblivion, because he can see the shivering reflections of light on the ceiling -- light flashing off the sullen rippling waves stirring green-clogged root-choked water.

There is just enough space in the cell for the bunk, really too kind a name for the slab of clammy stone -- and if he wants to do anything else, like eat or dispose of his own wastes, he’ll have to bang a fist against the rust-stained lattice of bars laid across the narrow doorway, each piece of cracked and crazed metal as wide around as a Wookiee’s arm.

He does that now. He can’t call out. The air that eddies sluggishly around him is a torment in its moisture: it clings stubbornly to his skin and won’t let him cool off -- and worse, is no refreshment at all, and in fact makes a mockery of the burning thirst in his throat. 

If not for the walls, if not for the bars, he’d be able to scoop up handfuls of brackish water to drink, never mind what’s been living and dying in that verdant murk.

Instead he has to wait for an indifferent-eyed warden to come around with a scant quantity of potable water -- and he gulps desperately at it though it’s blood-warm and there will never really be enough -- and he begs for another round, to no avail.

He peels off his sweat-soaked clothes and lays them out on the bunk. 

And he’s stuck in here.

Careless, his mind whispers at him, his thoughts whirling mercilessly around and around, sour and confined. But then again the rest of the Alliance sympathizers he’d been forging into a cell with their own communications and their own reliable supply lines had been just as shocked as he was to find the half-Rodian traitor in their midst. Credit chips in that being’s hands, passed to him by the severe-faced female Imperial officer who’d led the troopers. 

The same officer who had watched, impassive in the corner, as the troopers had tried to beat answers to their various same-old same-old questions out of Cassian.

He still winces in the here and now with almost every breath. A few tender spots, fading sickly yellow-green on his torso. He hates bacta and the sticky foul taste it leaves on his teeth and tongue, but he’ll have to demand it, if and when he ever manages to get within hailing distance of the Alliance.

Shouting and guttural swearing from one of the nearby cells: and he still doesn’t know where that Aqualian prisoner gets the energy for rage. Every night that prisoner spends several minutes angrily throwing its body against the unyielding walls, and every morning that same prisoner screams all manner of vile oaths at whoever might be listening.

Cassian’s biding his time, and biding his hope: it might take a while yet, he thinks, before he’s missed and before High Command can think about sending in any kind of rescue mission.

He swallows, again, and feels the lump of his thirst like spikes and heat in his throat.

Not for the first time, he tries to console himself.

Not for the first time, he tries to occupy himself: and what better to focus on than the idea of stealing a droid from this particular detention facility? No one in the Empire would be foolish enough to just _discard_ an RA-7 protocol droid -- so those units that were no longer functional were often consigned to rot in well-hidden storage facilities.

Seven levels beneath him is an access port for just one such storage facility.

So Cassian amuses himself by thinking of what he could do with two or three espionage droids at his disposal -- he’ll have to do a little more research into disguising their distinctive insectoid heads -- if he could break a dozen free of their Imperial programming, if he could just get his hands on their logic circuits, he thinks he might be able to _convince_ them to put their particular skills to work on behalf of his fellow rebels all over the galaxy.

How difficult could it be to get around them, he thinks, trying to stay within that place where time and weather and humidity fall away. How difficult could it be to reprogram those droids? He remembers the fevered days and nights of another confined place, and bruises and cuts all over, because the droid that had become his companion had not exactly been shy about self-defense. He remembers the intricate and too-elaborate twists and turns of the loyalty subroutines.

It isn’t the first time he’s had to wonder at the unusual robustness of Imperial programming: did they restrict that to just their droids, or -- as the rumors kept whispering -- did they _reprogram_ their stormtroopers as well? 

And it speaks volumes that there are layers and layers of defensive programming built into these droids -- it says a lot about the Empire and its reluctance to allow the beings and objects within it to think for themselves, and now he can hear Princess Leia Organa’s outrage on their behalf. He can hear Luke Skywalker’s determination.

He’s lucky they’re at the forefront of the Rebellion now; they are all lucky.

He just wishes, a little selfishly, for some of that luck to come blowing his way.

Days and nights pass in sullen monotony, and in the ever-deepening insidious agony of thirst.

So it stands to reason that when the rescue _does_ come, he’s less than prepared for it.

He’s fighting a losing battle between staying in his fogged dreams and thrashing reluctantly awake in the crushing humidity of the night when there’s a sudden crash right outside the bars of his cell -- he hears the outraged shouts of the Aqualian, and the groans of the prisoners who have been getting marched into the facility, and he forces himself to get to his feet and get ready to run, the grinding hunger in the pit of his stomach notwithstanding -- 

“I found him!”

He blinks.

And the being who is throwing open the bars of his cell is still dressed in Pathfinder fatigues, is still sporting a collection of bandages on her bared arms, is still unmistakably Jyn Erso despite her hair hacked roughly short.

“Jyn,” he says, and his attempt at springing to her side ends with her catching him and propping him up -- and swearing. 

“I was going to spare everyone in this facility, you know,” he hears her growl.

And his weight is balanced onto her own unsteady shoulders, lower in height than his -- and he winces when she bellows at whoever must be watching her back in this corridor: 

“Shackles on the commanding officer -- and someone cut the water supply lines!”

He blinks.

“These beings are perfectly uncivilized,” she snarls. “Depriving you of water? It’s a wonder you’re still alive.”

And she thrusts a flask at him, already uncapped.

Water, water inside, sweet-tasting on his parched tongue.

“More,” he says.

“Not now, too much and you’ll be sick. Swallow, let it settle, I’ll put you on a drip when we get to the ship.”

“How are you here?”

“We’ve been looking for you.” 

Is she hobbling? _And_ she’s bearing his weight -- he tries to break away -- 

“No, stay.” But that’s the weight of one of her heavy blaster pistols in his hands -- he can still shoot with the thing -- he promptly fires off a shot in the direction of a cluster of stormtroopers -- and then those unlucky beings go up in flames anyway, thanks to Chirrut and Baze walking shoulder-to-shoulder with all weapons ablaze.

“I got him,” Jyn is saying into the bulky commlink in her hand.

“The cell,” he manages to croak.

“Shara,” Jyn adds. “Find Cassian’s group, get them out to safety.”

“Copy that,” Shara Bey replies.

Out into the muggy humidity and the lake clogged with greenery and who knows what else -- and Cassian knows better than to fall to his knees, than to plunge face-first into the water.

But he’s so desperately tempted.

“Drink.” And now there’s a new being propping him up: Baze, his dark hair neatly braided back. In one hand is a squared-off pouch of water, twice the size of Jyn’s own flask. “Sip, or else I take it away from you.”

“Please don’t,” Cassian says.

And he’s being herded up into the getaway shuttle, something long-haul, and there’s a corner that’s been turned into a makeshift first-aid station and Kes Dameron is armed with bacta patches and a pair of shears.

“What have you done this time,” he says, conversationally, and Cassian is too busy trying to drink the water in controlled swallows, to protest as the other man cuts away his bedraggled clothes. 

Fortunately there’s a spare tunic and fatigues to put on, and just as well, as Jyn comes storming in, and he’d rather not face her in his emaciated naked skin.

The commlink in her hand is still squawking: “And the espionage droids?”

“Take all of them with you, just make sure they’re all deactivated,” he hears Jyn say.

He could kiss her. He wants to kiss her.

And she does kiss him: a firm press of her mouth to his forehead, like water on parched earth.

“Don’t go,” he tries to say.

“Right here,” she says.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompt Eleven: "confined" at [@rebelcaptainprompts](https://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr. 
> 
> I am also on tumblr myself -- look me up [@ninemoons42](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] like the deserts miss the rain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13101972) by [ninemoons42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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